Bench Memos: Judicial Nominations Update #35

The 116th Congress has officially begun, and it has a lot of work to do on the judicial nominations front.

The 115th Congress confirmed an impressive 85 new federal judges—including two Supreme Court justices and a record-breaking 30 circuit court judges. But thanks to former Senator Jeff Flake’s hold at the end of 2018, only one judicial nominee was confirmed before Christmas and

Because Democrats required cloture votes for the lion’s share of President Trump’s judicial nominees the last two years, there are now substantially more judicial vacancies than there were on Inauguration Day. At the beginning of the Trump presidency, there were 17 circuit court vacancies and 108 district/specialty court vacancies, for a combined total of 125 vacancies. That number has since ballooned to 162 vacancies, with 15 circuit court vacancies and 147 district/specialty court vacancies today.

The White House will now begin the process of re-nominating individuals for these vacancies. Those who had nominations hearings in 2017 or 2018 will not require new hearings but they will need to be voted out of Senate Judiciary Committee again, which will require additional Committee time for processing nominees.

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